


Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind

by livii



Category: Terminator Salvation (2009), Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:28:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livii/pseuds/livii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“But we also talked about hope, and winning, and believing.  We were idealistic little assholes, and I guess I still am.  It gets into your bones, that way of thinking, that way of living.  One of my favourite memories of John is watching and listening as he gave one of his radio speeches to the Resistance.  Stay alive, he said.  Stay alive: you have no idea how important you are, and how important you will become.  The people listening to that...they lived like animals, hunted and doomed, just like here.  But they listened, and they believed.  Can you imagine it?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Medie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/gifts).



> Warnings: language, brief discussion of pregnancy loss, mentions of major and minor character death.
> 
> Many thanks to my three betas: nentikobe, neveralarch, and lunacow, especially for tackling unknown fandoms.
> 
> Title from "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

“But why would anyone come _here_?” Andrea asks. “How could anything be worse?”

“Exactly,” Kate replies sadly. “Exactly.”

*

Andrea’s life used to be normal. She hadn’t known how to load a gun, let alone how to shoot one expertly. She’d never scavenged or foraged for food. She’d never gone truly hungry. She’d never killed anyone before.

She’d never contemplated killing her own sister.

“The world goes to shit, and we go with it,” she says, looking down at the corpse in front of her. It doesn’t even bother her anymore; that thing was trying to eat her, and she didn’t want to be eaten. Kill or be killed. What else can you do?

“We don’t have to,” Kate says softly, pulling Andrea away from the gore. She pulls a small handkerchief out of her pocket, and wipes blood and bone fragments off Andrea’s shoulder.

Andrea flinches. She’s still not used to this: human contact, gentle, careful. The world has been so cold and hard since Amy died. Even with Shane, that was raw and animal. Kate Brewster-Connor’s touch is full of emotion - it’s warm but she shivers, it’s thoughtful but somehow Andrea can’t trust it. It’s real, she thinks - which is hilarious, since Kate cannot possibly be real at all.

“Are you my imaginary friend?” Andrea asks. “I had one, when I was four. Her name was Merryweather and she was a good witch who rode a Pegasus. No one else could see her, though. Or at least, they pretended, but it was obvious they were just making shit up - they didn’t _know_ her.”

“I was talking to Rick just before this,” Kate points out. “And before that I ate from that can of peaches” - she gestures to the can Glenn is now finishing - “and before that I took a piss over behind that tree.”

“Spoilsport,” Andrea says, mock-pouting. “But you know what I mean. You’re not like the others.”

“A good witch,” Kate muses. “I guess that could be me. Andrea, I’m just trying to survive each day, same as you. The most important thing we can do right now is stay alive - but mostly In here,” she says, tapping her head, “and in here,” tapping her heart. “And also, I know things could be worse.”

Andrea laughs, long and loud. Kate does not laugh along. It’s so hard, Andrea thinks, to believe there could be anything worse than this. It’s so hard to believe that Kate has seen worse than this, and yet, still believes in her, believes in Andrea and her goodness.

*

Kate’s been with them for a month when the pack of five walkers attacks their campsite and catches them unaware. Andrea, who cannot possibly, remotely, whatsoever trust or believe in or love Kate yet, screams as she sees broken nails rip apart the tender flesh of Kate’s arm.

But there’s no blood.

“That’s my little helper,” Kate says, pulling at the flesh covering the metal when Andrea comes to investigate, the threat over. It squeaks a little, groans, and mostly fits back together. It looks like there will be a scar, a thin white line, but not much more.

“I thought you hated the machines,” Andrea says. She’s not sure why, but she feels betrayed by Kate’s duplicity; as if Kate is supposed to be above all of them, above her, and beyond reproach.

“I do,” Kate says, “but I like having two fully functional arms. It was a clean slice below the elbow, so attaching a metal forearm and hand wasn’t hard. I certainly wasn’t the first one to do it, even if John didn’t really approve. The flesh was harder; it’s prototype material, and I’m always afraid some day it’s going to melt or burst into flames or who knows what. But the technology’s a little too advanced to let it just be flashing around everywhere uncovered. Besides, think of it this way - built-in shield against walkers.”

Andrea snorts. “Oh, I can just picture it. Just a stiff forearm or a punch to the face and if you get grazed, no big deal, right?”

Kate smiles, one of those smiles that makes Andrea’s belly tingle and her instincts go haywire, telling her to _run run run_.

“So,” Andrea says, trying to pull away from the feelings, “do you wish we had this metal tech here now? Think of all we could do - preemptive metal shielding of arms and legs? Replace feet lost to gangrene or fingers to frostbite? My god, we live like animals these days, imagine what it could do for us.”

“ _No_ ,” Kate says, and there’s fire in her eyes that makes Andrea shiver. “Metal doesn’t solve anything. Every day when I get dressed I think about cutting off my arm at the elbow and burning it to ashes. I’m too weak to do it. But more won’t help. We are better than machines, Andrea. We are better than that.”

Andrea nods, but files away the knowledge of Kate’s arm for future consideration. She knows that Kate knows she’s doing this, but she has her people to look out for; she can’t just leave a possibility behind. Still, Kate’s eyes are sad, and Andrea has to turn away to avoid her gaze.

*

Kate Brewster-Connor had wandered up to their camp one day in autumn: fair of face and skin, lean but strong, with an implacable sadness in her eyes that left Andrea wondering how she hadn’t been easy walker bait yet.

They aren’t used to meeting new people anymore, and some of the group is against her joining them: creepy, they say. Something about her eyes. Andrea talks with Rick and they overrule the others. They can’t leave her out there alone. She’s watched carefully, but she’s smart and resourceful and pulls her weight. Her medical skills are particularly invaluable, even if they have no supplies.

Two weeks later, Andrea approaches Kate after dinner; by three weeks in they spend most of their time together, and Andrea gets up the nerve to ask Kate about the ring on her finger, and her past. Kate is so kind, and careful, and seemingly free from earthly attachments, but she twiddles the ring often and gets a look in her eye that makes Andrea feel strange.

“My husband?” Kate says, with a snort that turns into a half-sob. “My husband was John Connor, the leader of the Resistance in the war against the machines after Judgment Day. In the future, he sent his own father back in time to protect his mother. His father became his father in the past after fucking his mother and knocking her up, thus setting up the grandfather of all time paradoxes.”

Andrea stares, and Kate shakes her head. “John Connor was a good man. The best man. But he fucked with time. _We_ fucked with time. To be able to send his father into the past he had to go into Skynet headquarters to rescue his father. And the damn fool got himself killed there. We tried a heart transplant, but...we were in the desert, it wasn’t compatible, he was too far gone...I was a veterinarian, you know. Not a fucking heart surgeon.”

“You’re swearing,” Andrea says, not that there aren’t a million other things to comment on in the story, but Kate’s lack of composure and grace is the most immediately shocking.

“Yes, I’m fucking swearing,” Kate says. “And I was pregnant, and I lost my baby from grief, and Kyle Reese was a fucking teenager who had no idea what to do, and John wasn’t supposed to die until 2032 if even then at all, and suddenly time started...collapsing. And I saw the future and the past, all possibilities, and I came here.”

“This is insane,” Andrea says, getting up and pacing around. “Insane. I’ve been letting you stay with us, listening to you, and you’re completely insane. Time travel? You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Says the woman who fights the living dead on a daily basis,” says Kate. She looks tired and drawn, worn out from telling her story, worn out from her anger and her grief.

Andrea stops, turns to Kate. “How far along were you?” she asks, gently.

Kate closes her eyes. “Five and a half months. It was for the best anyway. What were we thinking, bringing life into that world? We needed people to fight the machines, but what would I have been giving that baby?”

“You,” Andrea says, “which is enough for anyone.” She sits down and puts her arms around Kate, and Kate cries into her shoulder, cries for her husband, her child, her whole life.

*

The walker that almost kills Andrea is particularly repulsive: a tall, thin man wearing the remains of an “I’m With Stupid” t-shirt and acid wash jeans, and missing an eye, large chunks of his torso, and his right hand. He looks like he turned early, and is putrefying. The stink makes them both throw up afterward.

Kate saves Andrea with the judicious application of a crossbow and excellent timing. Andrea curses her stupidity for days after, but Kate reminds her that she’s not perfect; that everyone lets their vigilance slip once in a while. Andrea replies that everyone who does ends up dead.

*

The walker that almost kills Kate is a newbie: big bite marks down the leg around the tattered pantyhose, the smell not overwhelming yet.

Andrea saves Kate with her gun and her quick instincts. Kate plays the everyone-slips-up card; Andrea grabs her and hugs her viciously, painfully tight, and makes her promise not to do so again.

Kate promises. They both know it’s meaningless, but they also both know that they have to believe the other will survive to keep surviving themselves.

*

“In one future,” Kate says, tracing a finger along Andrea’s face, jaw to ear, “you had a scar, running all along here.”

Andrea shudders, and leans in closer to Kate’s embrace. “Was I ugly?” she asks.

“Of course not,” Kate says. “We all have our scars, don’t we?”

Andrea thinks about that for a while. Kate continues.

“And you were with Dale,” she says, matter-of-factly.

Andrea sits bolt upright. “ _Dale_?” she says. “No, I mean - _Dale_?”

Kate just smiles. Damn her, Andrea thinks. It’s not like she’s never thought of it, but...

“There are so many versions of me out there,” Kate says, ignoring Andrea’s distress. “Sometimes I feel like I’m getting pulled apart, all of them reaching out for me. I miss some of them. I was good at being second-in-command. I was good at being a wife, the wife John Connor needed in that reality to win the war.”

Andrea runs her thumb over her face, jaw to ear. It’s like the imaginary scar is itchy and tight.

“Come on,” she says, pulling Kate up to standing. “The fire’s going out, and it’s getting cold. Let’s go to bed. You’re still good at a lot of things, you know.”

Kate smiles. There is so much in one of Kate’s smiles, Andrea thinks. There is so much in Kate.

*

They lose Carol, T-Dog, and Daryl at their next encampment. The walkers are everywhere. They stream in from all sides, biting and scratching and there’s chaos, nobody keeping their cool, nobody remembering what to do.

Andrea’s grief is unbearable. She might not be in charge of the group, but she’s the one they listen to; she’s the one who told others not to give up, having changed her tune since meeting Kate. Rick keeps up his stoic face while crying inside; Andrea’s despair is visible inside and out.

Kate holds her after the burials. Andrea sobs until she throws up, and she throws up until there’s nothing left inside her, not even a drop.

Andrea waits for the usual words of reassurance, to be told it’s not her fault, and the like. She waits and wonders if she has anything left to get angry with; she doesn’t want the platitudes, but they always come.

Kate just strokes Andrea’s hair, and hums softly. “John was my first kiss,” she says eventually. “We were so young. The next day the papers were full of news of carnage and destruction and he went missing. I grew up, I went to school, I got engaged. Then he came barging back into my life, telling me about the future, with one of the machines. And the next day was Judgment Day and three billion people died.”

“Fuck,” Andrea says. What else can she say?

“Fuck,” Kate agrees. “We definitely said fuck a lot. But we also talked about hope, and winning, and believing. We were idealistic little assholes, and I guess I still am. It gets into your bones, that way of thinking, that way of living. One of my favourite memories of John is watching and listening as he gave one of his radio speeches to the Resistance. Stay alive, he said. Stay alive: you have no idea how important you are, and how important you will become. The people listening to that...they lived like animals, hunted and doomed, just like here. But they listened, and they believed. Can you imagine it?”

“Carol,” Andrea says, moaning. “She’d already lost so much. Daryl. His brother. Oh god, Kate, we’re all walker bait and you know it. It’s just staying alive long enough to get your hopes up before becoming some rotting corpse’s dinner.”

Kate shakes her head. “I don’t know the future, not now that I’m in this timeline. But I chose to come here to fight. Time collapsed and everything went to shit, everywhere and every when. But with you, I could fight. And that’s what I know how to do, and it’s what I’m going to do, damnit.”

She stands up abruptly. Andrea sways, empty and sick and immediately missing Kate’s balance and support.

Kate holds out her hand. “Come with me if you want to live,” she says. There’s a steely look in her eye and Andrea senses that this is her moment to choose her destiny.

Andrea takes Kate’s hand, stands up. They survey the wreckage.

“We’ll move on at first light,” Kate says. “I know you say the cities are death traps, but I’m used to urban and gritty; all this rural living is too much for me. We’ll find a spot to clear and call our own. We’ll make it work.”

Andrea squeezes Kate’s hand tightly. “No fate but what we make,” she says. Kate looks at her quizzically, then shakes her head and smiles.

“You’re going to do just fine, Andrea,” she says, and they walk towards the rest of the group, backs straight and strong, heads held high.

**Author's Note:**

> After-notes: I truly apologize for killing off John Connor and the baby, even if it was off-screen. I hope this doesn't put a damper on your Yuletide; I know it's not quite in the spirit.


End file.
